If you’ve ever taken a little gander at my recipes, you might notice I don’t have very many baked goods & that’s because I’m not much of a baker. You’d think my love for science would translate to baking being my forte, but no recipe = inedible hot messes. In high school, I baked a lot of cakes using a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook my mom had. I loved that I could easily make an apple, carrot, or miscellaneous fruit cake from scratch & I always had friends over to lick my cake pans clean. I didn’t think it was challenging back then, but now? Trying to create the best chocolate chip cookies from scratch or even some elegant French macarons result in failure. I probably jumped the gun trying to tackle the macarons, but I figured since they’re some of the hardest things to bake; if I can’t cut it with those, I’m probably just bad at baking.

On the other hand, cooking comes really natural to me; toss a bunch of complementary ingredients together et voilà, dinner! So, one day I stumbled upon a beautiful recipe for Earl Grey Tea Loaf Cake & I was inspired to use my love for tea in my next baking adventures. While I still haven’t quite perfected the macaron, I have to start with my baking basics: cake. I’ve made a bunch of different breads in the last 3 weeks, but this recipe for my Maté Carrot Cupcakes is one of my favorite things I’ve baked so far. Using my new love for DAVIDsTEA’s Honey Bee maté, I figured it’d be delicious to bake with, but the remaining question was “in what?” Since maté originates in Argentina, should I make an Argentinian inspired cake for the first time or should I make a fancy smancy version of a cake I’ve made before? I went with the latter, because I figured I wasn’t about to infuse maté with 3 different kinds of meat.